


To Earth, Like Ashes

by featherxquill



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Eastern Europe, F/M, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-31
Updated: 2011-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:10:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherxquill/pseuds/featherxquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the summer following Voldemort’s acknowledged return to power, the International Confederation of Wizards call an emergency meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria. It’s Rita Skeeter’s first assignment in a year. It’s where Igor Karkaroff has gone to disappear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Earth, Like Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xochiquetzl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xochiquetzl/gifts).



> Written for Xochiquetzl for Beholder '08. Thanks to Katie for the beta.

_Know this, he who fell to earth like ashes,  
and was so very long oppressed,  
will rise higher than great mountains  
on the wings of shining hope._

\--Joseph Stalin

 

Sofia, thought Rita Skeeter, was a festering rat hole of a city. Oh, it was Bulgaria’s capital, of course, and the nominated location for international meetings held in Eastern Europe, so she couldn’t think it too loudly, but all the pretty architecture in the world couldn’t change the fact that it was overpopulated, polluted and intolerable in July heat. Add to that the fact that the Prophet had been too cheap to pay for a corporate portkey (forcing her to catch public ones, which meant stopping over in Vienna and having to traipse halfway across the city to catch the next one), and she could hardly be blamed for tossing phrases like ‘obsolete dingbat’ around when men like Albus Dumbledore just wouldn’t stop talking.

It was Rita’s first assignment in a year, following her spectacular return to the Prophet with the article about Potter. A reward, her editor had said. _We wouldn’t think about sending anyone but you. With the return of You-Know-Who, there’s to be an emergency meeting of the International Confederation of Wizards. Exciting stuff._

 _Bollocks_ , Rita thought, when she returned to her hotel room and kicked her shoes off after the first day. The Confederation were nothing but a bunch of self-important old fools.

*

Sofia, thought Igor Karkaroff, was the most beautiful city in the world. He hadn’t been quite sure when he’d first ended up here, but day by day the place had grown on him. Born and raised in rural Slovakia, his first instinct on fleeing the Dark Lord was to find himself a cottage in the middle of nowhere and hide. But where? And for how long? When he’d abandoned Krum during the third task, he’d chanced only two apparations – from Scotland to where Durmstrang lay on the northern border of Finland and Russia, and then south as far as his remaining skill would take him. He’d collected what possessions and gold he could fit into a single, shrunken case, but knew it wouldn’t last. He knew enough about farming that he could have survived, but he also knew that memories lasted longer once you ventured outside of cities. Strangers were noticed and talked about.

And so he’d ended up in Bulgaria, ironically the place so many thought Durmstrang was located since Viktor Krum’s rise to Quidditch fame. In Sofia he’d grown his beard long and disappeared into crowds. After years of living in the snowy wilderness surrounding Durmstrang, the city rattled him, but he found the din and the teeming traffic suited him. Once or twice he’d caught sight of youths who’d once been his students, but each time he’d turned his head and melted into one of the narrow, twisting side streets. Sofia’s architecture reminded him of a childhood visit to Bratislava, and the mountains surrounding the city gave him a sense of security. An illusion, he knew, but a comforting one. Vitosha looked like a sleeping beast, somehow even more broodingly alive through the haze of smog that so often settled down on them in the valley.

He learned quickly that the people of Bulgaria were not particularly content. Communism had fallen barely six years ago, and since then leadership of the country had been shunted between two opposing political parties, which had left the economy shaky and unemployment high. All over the city he heard disgruntled voices. They wanted a leader, they wanted money and jobs. He listened and made friends. Oh, he did it quietly – his freedom was of a pensive, look-over-the-shoulder type - but if there was anything the Dark Lord and his followers respected, it was power.

He was confident in his ability to stay hidden. After the first war, he’d managed to evade Alastor Moody for six months, and this time he’d been gone for more than a year. His strategy had worked, and when he heard about the emergency meeting of the International Confederation of Wizards, he knew the Dark Lord would have bigger things to worry about than European dissenters. If he thought of the press, he wasn’t particularly concerned – those who weren’t following the Confederation avidly would be chasing Krum, who had returned to the city after Bulgaria’s latest triumph over Ukraine.

He certainly didn’t consider the possibility of running into Rita Skeeter.

*

By the end of the third day, Rita was thoroughly tired of the meals being served at the posh restaurant inside the hotel where the conference was held. Oh, the bar did a lovely martini, and the place was picturesque, nestled as it was at the base of Vitosha Mountain, but it was all very sterile and pretentious. She was tired, too, of making small talk with stuffy French bureaucrats and German _Zaubererrat_ members who said, ‘Oh, you’re a _reporter_ ,’ with disdainful curls of the lip. And so, after returning to her own room (which wasn’t in the posh hotel – the Prophet was too cheap for that as well), and with a hankering for something real, she took to the streets to find a bar.

The city was much prettier at night. With the traffic dying down and smog hidden under cover of darkness, she might even have called it beautiful. Buildings centuries old were lit up with yellow and blue lights, alongside the more modern flats and neon signs. Narrow side streets twisted off into coloured shadows, and she followed the darkness toward more lights.

The place that finally drew her in was little more than a hole in the wall. She could see the whole thing from outside: a bar that stretched the length of the place, small, low tables more suited to drinking than eating, plush seats. Red hanging lights over all of it and a tea candle in a coloured jar on each table; dim but cosy. It may or may not have been her inner-beetle attracted to the lamps that took her inside.

*

Igor made a point of not being a ‘regular’ anywhere. To understand the full scope of this Muggle place and its politics, it was important to hear many different voices and meet as many people as possible. Of course, it had other benefits as well – if anyone were to turn up looking for him, they wouldn’t find him predictable, and he would likely hear about it and have time to disappear. This particular night, he found himself drinking and dining at a dim little bar off the beaten path. Earlier, he’d had a conversation with a man who’d turned out to have been a member of the former Communist party. It had been an interesting discussion, and it left Igor thoughtful and absorbed, nursing a glass of whiskey and picking at the candied nuts that lined the bar in small bowls.

And then he saw her. She was unmistakable, all blonde hair and bold colours, black skirt and stockings and some sort of sheer purple thing with feathers around the collar and cuffs. She looked ridiculously out of place, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. Plucking a menu from the stand near the entrance, she moved to one of the tables, set her handbag on it, then looked around as she sat down. For a moment, her eyes caught his. He turned his gaze away quickly, back to the glass in his hand that was apparently empty. He called for another. He wanted to get up and leave as quickly as his legs would carry him, but he’d have to walk past her to get back onto the street and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

 _Merlin_. He tried to look as inconspicuous as possible, to disappear into the shadows. He was unremarkable, thickly bearded. His wardrobe was now quite different than the one he’d worn as Durmstrang’s headmaster. Perhaps he could wait until her meal had been served and slink out through the haze of cigarette smoke two tables behind her. She wouldn’t recognise him. She couldn’t. He didn’t exist.

*

She didn’t, not at first. In her own country, Rita was rather infamous. She was used to the attention of men (and women, come to that), and she rather liked being looked at. It wasn’t the glance that caught her attention, but the way he steadfastly turned away and didn’t look at her again. She ordered a drink called _cloud_ , and after she’d decided on her meal, there was little else to do but observe. He didn’t turn back, didn’t so much as glance to the side, and he was tense. She could see it in the set of his shoulders.

There was something vaguely familiar about those shoulders, too, narrow and slight. For some reason, her mind conjured up images of ornate furs that didn’t quite disguise the weakness of build, but she couldn’t place the memory, if that was what it was. The drink arrived; she sipped it, watching a couple across the room have a conversation punctuated with ornate hand gestures that threatened to spill the drinks they were holding. She caught a few words of it, but while translation charms were wonderful for reading menus and quite adequate for one-on-one conversations, they didn’t work very well when it came to eavesdropping or the general cacophony of city noise.

She found her attention drifting back to the stranger at the bar, who seemed no more at ease with the new drink in his hand. She couldn’t escape the feeling that she knew him from somewhere, and a good reporter never ignored her instincts. If only he’d turn around and let her see his face again.

*

He was so determined not to look back at her that he wouldn’t turn around again even to see if she’d received her meal yet, or to know if she was looking at him. So determined, in fact, that he didn’t realise she’d moved and was standing beside him at the bar until he’d opened his mouth and ordered another drink.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew I recognised you. That voice just cinches it.”

He turned, eyes wide, and there she was, one elbow propped on the bar and an eyebrow arched in curious challenge. His palms grew suddenly damp. He feigned ignorance, told her in Bulgarian that he didn’t speak English, but the drink came over the bar and his hand shook when he pulled out his purse. His lie fell in the rattle of coins onto polished wood.

“Oh, don’t pretend with me, Igor. I’m far too experienced to be fooled, and you’re not exactly the most composed liar I’ve ever met.”

He didn’t say anything for a few long moments. She knew who he was, there was no pretending otherwise. He couldn’t just get up and leave, not without losing... He felt far too much potential in this city to be prepared to leave it just because this woman had spotted him. If he left now, she might not follow, but then he’d have no idea what she might do with her knowledge of his location. If he talked to her, perhaps he could convince her keep the information to herself.

“ _Please,_ ” he murmured, finally. “They call me Stanislav here. What do you want from me?”

He turned his head to regard her fully. She peered over her glasses at him, then glanced down at her nails, smoothing some invisible smudge off her middle finger with her thumb. “I’m not sure. I haven’t thought about that yet. I have spent the last three days constantly bored, though, so perhaps you can entertain me.”

 _Entertain?_ “How? With what?”

That eyebrow again. She smiled in a way that made him think of wolves. “Words. A story. I’ve been listening to a bunch of pompous old fools debating international magical policy for eight hours at a time. It won’t take much. Though I’d _love_ to know what you’ve been doing with yourself. Come, join me at my table.” It wasn’t an invitation that could be refused. He followed, limbs heavy, suppressing a shudder at the thought of what she might do if he wasn’t entertaining enough, or if he was _too_ entertaining for her to keep the story to herself.

She sat, the stool’s upholstery letting out an energetic breath as her weight settled on it. He sank down opposite and his own gave a long, pained sigh. She sipped a cocktail and he watched her silently. His beard itched. He scratched it.

“Why Sofia?” she asked. She pronounced it badly, with a hard ‘o’ like the woman’s name, and he smiled despite himself. She knew nothing about this place.

He gave the tiniest suggestion of a shrug. “Why not? It’s an interesting place. I like it.” Perhaps he could avoid telling her he was living here and she might think he was just passing through to pick up news of the Confederation. It would be a reasonable assumption. The Dark Lord’s movements did, after all, have the potential to affect him greatly.

“But surely the chance of being recognised–”

“Is far less than it would be in a rural area where people remember strangers’ faces. My former students come from all over Europe. Nowhere is without risk.”

She nodded, and a server approached to lay a bowl of Tarator on the table. It came with a spoon, but the tables were so low that to eat it that way would have been ridiculous. Rita reached down and picked up the bowl with both hands. He watched her fingers curl around it, heard the click of long nails against ceramic. She looked at him again.

“Britain has a new Minister. Did you hear?” He hadn’t, and the surprise must have shown on his face, because she smiled. “Only a few weeks ago. Fudge had a particularly bad week. Deatheaters blew up a bridge in Muggle London, and Emmeline Vance and Amelia Bones were murdered. They’re saying You-Know-Who killed Amelia himself, _inside_ the Ministry. They appointed Rufus Scrimgeour as Minister, and he’s certainly a more impressive figure than Fudge.”

“Indeed.” Igor remembered him. He’d been a fledgling Auror during the first war, part of one of the many groups trained by Alastor Moody.

Rita sipped at the chilled soup, murmuring a little noise of pleasure. “It’s like a liquid salad. I could eat salad every day of the week. So do you have much contact with the Wizarding world?”

He laid his empty whiskey glass down on the table and laced his hands together. “A little. Obviously not a lot – that would be rather stupid of me.”

“Lucius Malfoy is in prison.”

“I did hear that.”

“I suppose you would have.”

She cradled the soup bowl in one hand, gestured for more drinks with the other. Feathers fluttered around her wrist and the sleeve slipped down to expose the pale skin of her forearm. She noticed him looking. He pulled his eyes away.

“You like it?” she asked, leaning forward and letting her sleeve brush the back of his hands. Feathers tickled his skin and he felt the hairs along his arms stand up. Silence again as the drinks were delivered, hanging palpably in the air in the moments after the server departed.

“So, little contact with the Wizarding world. What _have_ you been doing, then?” She had the bowl in both hands again, watched him over the rim as she took another sip.

His thumb played a nervous pattern on the inside of his palm. “Not a lot. Drifting. Earning a living here and there. Nothing spectacular.” Irritated by the movement of his hands, he pulled them into fists and set them on his knees.

Rita laughed at him. “Oh, come now. Drifting? You expect me to believe that you ran away just to _drift?_ The man who sold out on his Deatheater allies to keep himself out of prison, and went on to become Headmaster of Durmstrang ? Doing nothing? Please. You must have something up your sleeve. I’m interested purely for curiosity’s sake. I’ll keep it to myself if you want me to.”

Her eyes were large and earnest, her body language inviting. He didn’t trust it for a moment – the woman was a Slytherin if she was anything – but that last phrase hung in his mind. _I’ll keep it to myself if you want me to_. No doubt she thought there was no ‘if’ about it, but he suddenly wasn’t so sure. Who was an aspiring politician without the press, after all? Perhaps he should tell her. Maybe she could help. The Dark Lord was incredibly ignorant about the Muggle world. At the right time, and with the right spin, having Rita Skeeter on his side could be quite beneficial indeed.

“Well,” he said, and lifted the fresh glass of whiskey from the table with a smile. “Actually, I’ve become rather interested in Muggle politics.” Her eyes lit up, and he told her what he’d learned.

He told her about corruption in the political system, about the troubled economy and the unemployment. He told her about the dissatisfaction of the man on the street, and about the way no one seemed sure what they wanted, electing the socialist party and then the democratic anti-communists and back again. The problem, of course, was that before 1990, they hadn’t had an election for nearly sixty years. The Bulgarian people didn’t know how to think for themselves. Most of them had never had to. What they needed was someone to tell them what to do again, a charismatic leader, someone who knew how to speak, to orate – to cast a spell, even.

Rita seemed fascinated. She hung on his every word, her hand falling on his arm, lifting into the air to call for more drinks, brushing against his knee. They seemed to replace his more often than they did hers, but he certainly wasn’t drunk, and he hadn’t had an audience for these ideas before. She asked questions that made him think, posed contradictions that helped him see the holes in his plan, made suggestions. Merlin, how he’d missed the Wizarding world and being able to talk freely about his abilities.

They talked until the bar closed, until the servers were blowing out the candles on the tables, and they were forced to leave. Out on the street, Rita linked her arm through his and adjusted the collar of his shirt. The feathers on her cuff tugged at his beard and tickled his ear. “Perhaps there is somewhere we can go to continue this conversation?”

He hesitated. His whole time in this city, no one had visited his flat. No one knew where he lived. It was the one constant in his life, the only place he returned to daily.

She must have felt the tightness in his body, because her hand ran over his shoulder again and she said, “I would suggest my room, but it’s in the hotel where the Confederation is meeting, so it’s crawling with wizards.”

He didn’t think on it too long. Before he knew quite what he was about, he’d taken her hand and was leading her through the narrow, twisting streets to his flat, one of four that squatted atop a dry cleaner’s and a tobacconist. It was a simple affair with whitewashed walls that were no longer quite white, little furniture and a kitchenette without the benefit of cupboards to hide the pipes. His bed was nothing more than a mattress on the floor, and the tiles in the bathroom were a sickly green colour. A far cry from his elaborately decorated quarters in Durmstrang castle, but if he’d stayed around there, he doubted he would still be alive to appreciate them.

“I apologise for the surroundings,” he said. “Perhaps in future I will have something grander.”

“It’s perfectly all right,” Rita replied. “And I’ve no doubt you will.”

“Wine?”

“Wine would be lovely.”

He had a few bottles of Mavrud stored on one of the shelves – in hiding or no, he couldn’t bear to drink bad wine. As he poured, he glanced over at Rita, who had seated herself on the edge of the bed, one leg bent and the other stretched out, holding herself up on her hands. He found it intriguing that she'd chosen to sit there rather than at the table behind him. She smiled at him, red lips twitching, then let her head fall back onto her shoulders. Her throat was even paler than her forearm, long and bare. She made a beautiful contrast against the drab surroundings, a shining premonition of his possible future: power, respect, money, the attention of glamorous women.

Along with his forced exile, he’d taken a self-imposed one from the pleasures of female company. It had been important for him to keep his wits about him. He hadn’t wanted to be so distracted by an attractive woman that he failed to notice the Deatheater creeping up behind him. But this, this was an alliance, and what better way to bind it? He carried the glasses over and sat down beside her.

“To the future,” he said when he’d handed her the drink.

“The future,” she echoed, touching the lip of her glass to his. Her eyes smiled, devious. She didn’t take them off him as she sipped her wine.

He felt his pulse quicken in anticipation. His hands trembled; he had to press the stem of his wine glass against his leg to stop it spilling. She lowered her own, cradling it lazily, wrist resting across her knee. Her entire body spoke of invitation: open and relaxed, turned slightly toward him. There was that dancing amusement in her eyes, but she didn't speak. Waiting for him to make a move. He felt suddenly awkward in his own skin. One hand was occupied with the wine glass and there was too much distance between them - he'd sat down too far away. He pressed his free hand against the mattress and his heels against the floor, shifting closer but trying not to make it obvious. He turned toward her, watching the way her breath made the feathers on her collar quiver, the way one of her curls caught in it for a moment as she turned her head toward him, then sprung loose and jostled the rest of them.

 _For Merlin's sake, man,_ do _something_.

He lifted his hand and was grateful that it didn't shake too badly. His fingers brushed her cheek. Her skin was soft, smooth, powder-dry. Down around the curve of jaw and his thumb tugged at her bottom lip, coming away sticky with red lipstick and revealing pink beneath the scarlet. She watched him, breath warm on his fingers. He dragged his thumb sideways over her lip and smeared the colour onto her cheek.

When he kissed her, it was gentle, fingers under her chin and mouth exploring. She was soft, yielding but not shy, taking his measure and giving back just a little bit more; urging him on. He shifted, taking the wine glass from her as quickly as he’d offered it; setting them both on the floor. She slid her glasses off her nose and folded them neatly.

His arms were full of her, then, breasts pressed against his chest and her hands sliding hot up his back as he kissed her again, one hand fisting in that nest of blonde curls. He tugged her head back, baring her throat to him, and licked his way down it, scraping with lips and tasting the salt on her even as feathers tickled his face and his beard scratched against her skin.

Pulling back, he took in the sight of her, head back and lips parted, the red of her lipstick smudged even further by his kisses. Her eyes were dark with desire, almost black, dilated pupils in stark contrast to the ring of blue iris around them. As he watched her, she smiled at him, hand slipping down to his waist and tugging his shirt from his trousers. A moment later, he felt that warm palm against his skin. Her touch was electric, punctuated by the scrape of nails, and he had to fight hard to not gasp, to not just dive into her. This was a test as much as the conversation had been. If he jumped in like an overeager schoolboy, she'd never take him seriously. He held himself in check, trailed a finger along her collarbone, slipping it underneath the feathered hem of her sheer jacket and dragging the fabric down over her shoulder.

Gods, she was beautiful. Her skin was creamy white, almost glowing against the dark clothes she wore. Soft and rounded under his fingers, pressed up against him, and it had been so, so long since he’d let himself let go. His hand splayed against her back, pulling her up toward him, and he buried his head against her neck, suckling the skin where throat met shoulder and kissing his way across, pulling the strap of her camisole down with his teeth. She smelled of musk, sweet and heady.

Her hands inside his shirt, then, nails pulling at buttons and slipping inside to skim fingers over chest. He shed his shirt and her jacket fluttered to the floor like a flightless bird. When they collapsed onto the mattress, her legs went about him, skirt rucked up until he could feel her heat around him, feel the clasps of her suspenders against his thighs. He pressed closer, surged toward her, straining against his pants. His cock ground against her pelvic bone. He wanted so badly to be free of his clothes.

Silence broke in whispered breath, in the sound of zippers undone and shoes kicked onto the floor. When she was naked beneath him, he wished for candlelight. Wished for the plush quilts of his bed at Durmstrang, if only to see her blonde hair all spread out across them, to trace the curve of breast and hip by the flickering yellow glow of flame and dip his fingers into the places that had trailed off into shadow. These pallid electric lights were static and monotone. They did not do her justice.

His fingers moved over her belly and up to cup her breast. It fit perfectly in his palm. He dragged the heel of his hand over her nipple and caught it with his thumb. Her head pressed back against the covers; she bit her lip.

One day. One day when he was the best leader Bulgaria had ever known and she had spun the news that made the Wizarding world respect him for it, he would repay her. He would spread her out on forest green velvet and watch the contortions of her face by firelight. For now, this would have to do.

She wrapped her hand around him, he covered her. She whispered _now_ and he pressed forward. Her hips arched to meet him. He sank into her heat, her weight soft and full beneath him, and he closed his eyes. _Yes_.

They rose and fell, traversed continents, toppled governments. He rode her tide, she arched beneath him, urging him on and deeper. She led, he followed, but when she broke beneath him he pushed her on, drove her farther, hand slipping between them to stroke and circle, trapping it there beneath his weight until she gathered momentum and fell again, holding him tight and taking him with her.

He threw his head back and the light was bright in his half-closed eyes. In the moment of stillness he saw forever in that white blindness – everything he was and everything he could be. Then forward again, forward until he was empty. Her waves had broken and they both collapsed into the swell as it rushed away from them.

Cooling and dim, their bodies sticky and side-by-side, legs still tangled together, the soft murmur of breath filled the air. He let his hand fall onto her thigh, drawing circles with his thumb. She seemed careless and sated, she barely moved beside him. If this had been a test, he was fairly sure he'd passed it.

Igor closed his eyes, exhausted but fighting sleep. He thought again on his conversation with the old Communist. Once a member of parliament in the Soviet Union, the man had spoken with an almost religious awe of Joseph Stalin, his skills as an orator, his ability to manipulate people and turn comrades against one another, his vision. What Bulgaria needs, the man had said, is a man like that, someone with something different, something more than what the weak party leaders that the public displaced so quickly have. Someone with Power, who isn’t afraid to use it.

“Why should we hide?” he wondered, staring at the ceiling.

“Hmm?” Rita murmured, shifting lazily.

He propped himself up on one elbow and turned to face her. She was holding her head in one hand, the leg that wasn’t next to his dangling off the edge of the mattress onto the floor. Sprawled and uncaring, on display. Her eyes swivelled to meet his as he looked at her. They were much bluer than they had been earlier.

“Why should we have to hide our magical ability?” he asked. “The Bulgarian people, they need a leader. Someone who isn’t just one of them – someone better. Shouldn’t wizards _be_ those people? Nature gave us something more than she gave Muggles, and yet we hide away from them and pretend we don’t exist. Why shouldn’t we be ruling them openly?”

*

If someone had asked Rita in a week, a month, a year, how she had replied that night, she wouldn’t have been able to say, except that she murmured something that sounded like vague agreement, then picked up their glasses of wine. But hearing those words and seeing his eyes light up like a zealot's, her blood ran cold.

Rita was not a stranger to history. A few years ago, she’d gone poking around libraries and archives looking for information about Grindelwald. His name was one that everybody knew, but very few people seemed to know anything _about_. In the Slytherin common room during her days at school, his name had been bandied about carelessly. Rita's dorm-mate Bellatrix Black had often spoken of the new Dark Lord who was going to do things right this time, but no one had seemed to know what the old one had done wrong. The truth was Grindelwald's campaign had been in Europe during the Second World War, and what he’d been up to had not come to light until many years later. There was very little published about him in English, so what was spoken about was usually based on distorted oral history. A possible goldmine for a British writer. As it was, Rita's research had uncovered quite a few interesting titbits about an adolescent friendship with Dumbledore, so she’d decided to sit on the information for a while - probably until the old man died, because the facts were sketchy at best and would need considerable embroidery to make a saleable story. Those sorts of things didn't tend to work as well when the subject was around to defend himself.

But Rita knew about Grindelwald. She knew that his campaign had been about demolishing the Statute of Secrecy and establishing Wizard rule over Muggles. She knew that he’d infiltrated Nazi ranks and infected many of them with ideas about the occult, about how the Aryan race was descended from a higher society that had disappeared. She knew he had not been above using their war and their concentration camps to eliminate his enemies and further his own ends.

She looked at Igor and thought that what had seemed like an interesting story – whether of success or arrogant idiocy depended on the outcome – had turned into something decidedly more sinister. The desire in his eyes had not abated, but she wondered now if it was really her that he wanted at all.

*

At sunrise the next morning she slipped out, a colourful spectre in last night’s clothes. The rising sun had turned the air orange and the city was just starting to ring with noise. Back in her hotel room, Rita showered away the smell of him and wrote an owl with wet hair still dripping onto her shoulders.

 

 _Bellatrix,_

 _It has been a long time since we’ve spoken, but I have some information that I believe will interest you. I am in Bulgaria for the International Confederation of Wizards, and I ran into Igor Karkaroff last night. If you give me your word that the deed will be done in England and the story mine to break, I will send you the address where you can find him._

 _Rita Skeeter_

 

The only part of Igor Karkaroff she ever saw again was his left foot. When she arrived in Northumberland to see the Dark Mark hanging over a decrepit shack, the Aurors were already on the scene. She heard one of them whisper _vulture_ as she moved about asking questions, and when they bundled him up and removed him, the white sheet he was swathed in had been draped carelessly and didn't quite cover both his legs.

 

 

* * *

  
Additional Notes:

\- The poem at the beginning of the fic is not by the real Joseph Stalin, but rather by a fictional version of him written in [The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin](http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lourie-stalin.html), which is actually by Richard Lourie. The quote was far too good to pass up, however, so I used it anyway.  
\- The ideas about Grindelwald were inspired by a Red Hen essay, [The Significance of 1945](http://www.redhen-publications.com/1945.html).


End file.
